ASEAN automotive & supplier market overview

With BRIC market growth fading away from the double digits of a few years ago, OEMs and suppliers are looking at other smaller regions in Asia as potential growth markets

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established in 1967 and currently includes 10 member countries: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Each nation has an automotive and automotive supplier industry at different developmental stages – some burgeoning, some established and others somewhere in-between. For the purposes of this report, the focus will be on automotive markets in five vehicle producing ASEAN countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. These five countries have the most developed automotive and automotive components industry in the region. It is clearly led by Thailand – producing over 2.4 million vehicles a year, trailed by Vietnam producing less than 100,000 vehicles a year, with Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines somewhere in the middle. These five countries together produced 4.2 million vehicles in 2012 – globally, this would rank them within the top five vehicle producing nations.